An Apology from Dyslexia Victoria Online

This is not a blog or newsletter or weekly report, it is an apology. We have been so busy doing seminars, workshops, presenting at school Pro-D days and meeting other “Service Providers” that we just have not attended to our website responsibilities. I mentioned earlier that we had begun to partner with Vancouver Island Dyslexia Association and were working to raise awareness of Dyslexia. Well, we are sure getting the word out.

The combination of dyslexia awareness presentations by both VIDA and Dyslexia Victoria Online has proven so popular that we are in demand all the time now. We have also done presentations for private and government service providers. As of right now we are booked up to the end of June.

The wake up call, for me, that we had lost track of our website responsibilities occurred when we were doing a seminar for a group of local Government and private service providers. One of the attendees noticed the name of our website on the brochure we had handed out. This person asked if we were involved in the weekly chats and blogs, “Rants and Raves From the Right Side” and she wondered why the articles had stopped. That kind of made this even more real for me. Our messages are getting out around the world and I found a person in my home town who is reading our information. We will try to be more responsible.

So again, this is not really a blog or anything else other than an apology and we will try harder to get back on track and inform you about what we have learned about the world of Dyslexia.

This video shows some of the news coverage we are starting to get. Woo hoo!

Happy Trails!
Howie deGraaf

Dyslexics don’t See Words in their Minds, they See Pictures

When you ask a dyslexic/right-brain child or adult what they “see” in their minds when you tell them to imagine a concrete word such as “car” they will usually tell you they see a picture of a specific car or multiple cars – they don’t see the word “car”.  Normally when you ask a left-brain person what they “see” when you ask them to think about the word “car” they will see the written image of the word in their mind, a car or a car and the word. But generally they can visualize the word when they need to.

This is a huge difference between a right-brain and left-brain thinker.  Dyslexics have a difficult time trying to learn to read because they see pictures of what the word is, not the symbols of written language that represent the word.

Now let’s take abstract words.  To a dyslexic words like “up”, “down”, “when”, “now”, “is” are difficult to learn how to spell and remember if they can’t easily visualize the idea of “down”.  They need context so they can come up with a visual image to understand and remember these type of words.  You can have a dyslexic practice these words with all the different methods to learn to spell and read that are appropriate for dyslexics along with visualization exercises to pair the meaning of the word with a concrete image in their minds.

One way to have dyslexics practice visualizing abstract words is having the student write sentences using these abstract words in a sentence that represents  a clear picture in their minds of what this abstract word means.

For example, go to Google Images, google a word like “down” and you will get many webpages of concepts of what “down” can mean.  Have your dyslexic student pick images of “down” that make sense to them, copy the pictures to your computer into a document in a program like  Microsoft Word and then on the same page create and write sentences about the picture using the word “down”.  The sentences can be serious or silly, whatever pleases your student.   Always remember to keep the picture and sentences on one page so that they connect the picture with the word as this will help them remember the written image of the word “down”.  This method can be used effectively paired with individual concrete words (animal, place or thing).

Teaching methods for the dyslexic should always incorporate the idea that they see “whole concrete images” best. Dyslexics will often learn how to spell and read words more successfully if they can use their ability to see pictures of the meaning of a word paired with seeing the word as a picture and not several parts and individual letters. For example: instead of emphasis on the letters in the word “d-o-g” they are taught “dog” as a total picture.

More on this another day.

Cheers!
Karen Hope
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

Large Print Books for Dyslexic Students and Adults

Today I would like to talk about large print books for dyslexics. When we work with dyslexic adults or children we notice that reading small print is often difficult and tedious like slogging through mud.   They cannot track print on a page or see the individual words and letters.  They see all the text on a page as one entire image and cannot separate one word from the other.

Some dyslexics can read small text, but the process  of reading can be exhausting requiring all their mental energy and concentration to decode the words so comprehension becomes very difficult.  Often the dyslexic will read passages over and over trying to understand what they have read because their brain was concentrating on seeing and recognizing the words and cannot retain the information in their short term memory or move it onto long term memory.

So what can be done to help with this problem? One way is using large print books. They make it easier to see the words separately from each other and from other lines of text. The brain doesn’t have to concentrate so hard on decoding because the pictures of each word can be easily differentiated from other words. Comprehension and memory is improved and reading doesn’t feel like such a hard job.

Many children’s books are set in large print and should definitely be used with dyslexic students if at all possible. There are many websites that sell large print books for older children and adults. You can also find them in bookstores or libraries.

I have provided a couple of websites that I found that also sell large print books. www.largeprintbooks.com and www.amazon.ca/large-print-Books or www.amazon.com/Large-Print-Books

For more information and teaching solutions for dyslexia check out books on our homepage at www.dyslexiavictoria.ca

Thanks for listening.
Karen Hope
Co-founder Dyslexia Victoria Online

“Chalk Talk” for Dyslexic Students

In the last blog chat titled: “The Five Steps to Teaching a Dyslexic Student” I mentioned a teaching technique called the “Chalk Talk”. It is actually something I remember some of my teachers in both grade school and high school using. They would start the class spending a few minutes telling the students what to expect for the duration of that class. Mind you, not all my teachers would do this, but the few that did made it easier for me to learn the material being taught in that lesson.

This method is very important and effective when teaching right-brained or dyslexic students because they need to see the “big picture” which is addressed when using a “chalk talk”. Actually once they get what the task at hand is about they can’t help but come up with the big picture. More importantly though is the need for the student to see what the end result is supposed to be before they will want to start figuring out all the steps to get to the end. That is where the Chalk Talk is so effective. It details exactly what the end result is going to be. My instructor in college even took it one step farther.

When he started the class, not only did he tell us what we were going to learn that day he also spent a couple of minutes summarizing what we did the class before and told us how today’s lesson was going to lead to the next one. Now that actually fits in with steps 1, 4 and 5 of the “The Five Steps to Teaching a Dyslexic Student” mentioned last week.  He told us why we needed to learn this material,  what the outcome of the lesson was going to be, when to hand in  assignments for the lesson, etc.   This is also very important for the dyslexic student. These students need to understand the limits of an assignment; they need to know when to stop and what details are to be included in their work.

During a recent Pro-D day presentation I assisted with I learned some interesting perspectives from some of the teachers attending our presentation. The teachers  mentioned that they didn’t understand why some of their students were asking so many questions during and after lessons they were going over in class.

They were  wondering if the students  were not paying attention or why they needed so much additional instruction for that days assignment(s).  We explained that these students might need to see what the assignment was supposed to look like and was about before they were ready to start learning the steps needed to understand the lesson.  The dyslexic student also needed more information about the steps than usually covered in class and had extensive questions about how to complete an assignment about the topic.  Without all of these issues being addressed a dyslexic individual will often not understand the material  and feel paralyzed because they don’t have all the information they need to complete an assignment.

Even though this is knowledge that is becoming second nature for me I was a little shocked that these teachers were not aware that certain students such as dyslexics needed more extensive and complete information when learning a new concept and completing homework on the subject.   I suppose the knowledge of dyslexia’s many issues is still a mystery to many people.

This little technique is such a powerful one that I wish all teachers would use it. I spoke to a special needs teacher from California last week who is of the opinion that all teachers should be trained with many different methods for presenting tasks. This teacher even went as far as to say that if teachers were trained better it is very possible that a lot of problems with “learning disabilities” probably wouldn’t be problems anymore. This is a very bold statement that I tend to agree with.  What we have seen with our work with dyslexic students is that a lot of the problems they suffer from are solved when the teacher or parent is given different methods for presenting the same information. That is what we at “Dyslexia Victoria Online” are attempting to do with all the techniques we describe in our books and we will continue to do as we learn more about  presenting information to students with dyslexic issues.

Happy Trails!

Howie deGraaf

Editor for Dyslexia Victoria Online

Jan Turner

Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

Wrote the “The Five Steps to Learning “

developed from Karen Hope’s and her

research.

The Five Steps to Learning for Dyslexic Students

This week we are going to talk about what a dyslexic student needs to learn new skill sets in the classroom and in their personal lives.

In the second chapter of our book “Dyslexia or Being Right Brained” we have listed a five step procedure called THE FIVE STEPS TO LEARNING.  (To check out the book click: Dyslexia or Being Right-brained)

THE FIVE STEPS TO LEARNING FOR DYSLEXIC STUDENTS

1. WHY? Why must I learn this? (Purpose)The student must first know WHY it should accept an assignment or do a lesson.

2. WHAT? What do you expect to find in my answer(s)? The student must be trained to take notes, choose appropriate materials, focus, organize and develop answers that present ideas in a logical sequence on the question or topic to be discussed.

3. HOW? How do I present my answers? Orally or written, single words, sentences, paragraphs or essays? How do I write each of these forms? The skills required are the basic rules of grammar, sentence structure, paragraph and essay formats. The student must be shown the full process of these language formats for organizing the ideas and answers either for visual, written or oral presentation.

4. WHEN? When do I start, finish and hand in the assignment? The student must be instructed when to start on the assignment, in class or at home and when it must be finished for correcting or handing in for marking. Without these instructions they don’t understand the time limits involved and may panic without them and may even be unable to do the assignment at all.

5. OUTCOME? What have I learned, how will I use this information in future? The student must perceive the whole picture, its outcome and future applications in lessons or assignments if the student is to do the work successfully.

These are questions that a parent or teacher should ask themselves when presenting a topic of study or project to be done like a science or social studies project, or anything for that matter. The teacher needs to make sure that the instructions are stated in a way that answers these 5 questions.

They refer to how information is best presented to a dyslexic or right-brained student. We can never assume that what appears basic, obvious and easy to understand to us is going to be so to every student in the classroom. In most instances, if the dyslexic student does not get answers to all their questions for an assignment they can be paralyzed into inaction.

Actually this format works well for all students, I’ll go into this in a little bit.  To begin with, these questions were created by Karen Hope, the co-founder of the TURNER-HOPE METHOD.  In earlier blogs, see Rants and Raves from Dyslexia Victoria Online “The Story of a Dyslexic Mother and Daughter” we have mentioned Karen’s struggles with getting her three dyslexic children taught in the regular school system in California. Her struggles started with Genevieve when she was 7 years old and was diagnosed with dyslexia. For the next 15 years Karen helped her children understand their learning styles and devised the teaching techniques demonstrated in our books.

Karen quickly realized that the right-brained learning style of her children put certain restrictions on how they learned. As is now obvious to any person aware of right-brained or dyslexic issues, the “Big Picture” is of huge importance. We have seen and read that every person who is a right-brained learner needs to see the limits of a task; they need to know what the end result is supposed to look like. They also need to know all the little steps that make up the big picture, which is the purpose of the 5 points listed above.

The over-all purpose of the 5 Steps list is to give you, the teacher or parent, an understanding of what the questions mean that these students are asking after you assign the task. Many teachers we have spoken to are left confused and overwhelmed at the number and manner of questions that some students ask after the teacher has assigned a topic. If you ask yourself if your instructions to the student answer the points of the 5 Steps, chances are that you have presented the assignment in a way that makes sense to the right brained students and the rest of the class as well. Here is an example of a method that worked for me in later life.

While taking some Civil Engineering courses about 10 years ago one of my classes was taught by a former highway maintenance foreman. Even though he was not in any way qualified to be a teacher or professor his class in highway design was one of the least difficult ones because of his “Chalk talk”.

He started the class with a 5 minute explanation of what we had learned the class before, what we were going to do that day, what we were going to learn and how we were going to do the tasks. He had all this information printed on the blackboard too. Unintentionally he had created a lesson format that worked for a right-brained student (me) and the whole class. The rest of the class really appreciated the way he did his classes and he told me that he had started all of his work crews with the same method.

So the lesson for today is all about perceptions, again. It really is hard to blame the teachers of the school systems here in Canada and America, most of the skills they need to recognize various learning issues are not taught very well during their training. And as long as these learning disabilities are dealt with as they have been in the past and up to now it is going to tough for us to deal with the solutions. If you look at the 5 Steps and realize that they are asking us to appreciate what the dyslexic student needs to know then we can be one step closer towards helping these individuals. It is of utmost importance that we not act with impatience or dismiss any of the questions of these students. It really isn’t a lot to ask and as long as the school districts can’t allocate the funds necessary then it’s up to us. Now that is a whole shift of perceptions of what can be done.

Happy Trails!

Howie deGraaf

Editor for Dyslexia Victoria Online

How to Teach Fractions to a Dyslexic

How Cutting  up an Orange will Help a Dyslexic Understand Fractions:

Have you ever noticed how your child can’t get fractions? Every time I study the materials for editing purposes, when writing or revising our books and e-books, I learn an interesting fact about Dyslexia. I have never had any dyslexic issues though I am very “right brained”.  I sometimes have problems with dealing with little issues while editing but I am really good at planning for the big picture.  Now, back to what I found interesting, fractions.

In the book “Dyslexia or Being Right Brained” there is a method that is very helpful for kids who have problems learning how to do math problems with fractions. In the book the technique uses a cut up orange for showing the parts that represent fractions. At first this seems a pretty standard idea but there is an added part that puts this all together. There has to be a whole, uncut orange near the cut up orange at all times. The idea of fractions can seem pretty abstract to a dyslexic.  By having the whole orange present the student sees that the parts are actually part of a whole item and this is a real world “concrete” example not a bunch of abstract concepts and symbols on paper.

Karen Hope, the co-founder of our website and the books, had an inspiration when teaching her daughter Genevieve, who was about 9 years old at the time. Gen just couldn’t get the idea of what a fraction represented.  Her mom tried all the standard tricks the school had but with no success. Even showing actual fractions of a cut up orange instead of just numbers on a page didn’t work.

Then Karen had the inspiration. One of the most important aspects to understand when teaching a person with dyslexic issues is to present a new concept by showing the whole image or a real world “concrete” example. So she had the “concrete” example, she just needed the whole image part, that’s when she added a whole, uncut orange. By having the entire orange present while cutting up another orange Karen was able to display that the fractions were actually parts of the whole orange.  Once Genevieve saw this she got the idea of fractions and no longer had problems with them.  Simple and profound.

I guess the point I am trying to make here is even though dealing with dyslexia for yourself or a child can seem daunting, many times it is the simple changes that can have really positive results. As I continue to edit and revise the books and continue my research duties I see that most often the little changes in perception make the largest differences.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we need to understand that one of the most difficult challenges for people dealing with dyslexia is being understood. The questions they ask usually tell us what they need.

In our book “Dyslexia or Being Right Brained” we fully explain why this method works for the dyslexic. Included in this book are: spelling solutions, color coding words, taking measurements, telling time, using weights and using money too.

Click on the following link and visit the website. You will find our books and lots of free information – www.dyslexiavictoria.ca or www.dyslexiavictoriaonline.com

Happy trails.

Howie deGraaf

Editor for Dyslexia Victoria Online

I Learned Something New from a Dyslexic Today.

Goofy Scrooge McDuck and one of the nephews drawn by an 11 year old dyslexic

It seems like I learn something new every time I talk to someone with dyslexic issues.  During this past holiday season I spent some time with Wil, a son of one of the co-authors of DYSLEXIA VICTORIA ONLINE. He is an adult now and a very successful welder and metal fabricator with a large construction company in California. He had to deal with many problems as a dyslexic child but with his mother’s assistance he succeeded in school and now he is not only successful but also confident of his abilities. We were talking about how he is able to fabricate complicated metal projects so well because he sees the finished product in his head before he has even started.  Now this is an example of what many professionals call “seeing the big picture” or maybe an example of a problem solving skill at it’s finest level.  I have heard of people who do this very well and usually these examples are rather commonly mentioned as “learning strengths” when talking about people who are dyslexic or right brain predominant.  It was the next two observations that I found so fascinating.

We were talking about his musical interests and how frustrating it was for him to learn how to play a guitar in school.  When the music teachers tried to have him learn the musical notes as written on a page he couldn’t do it.  The notes appeared all smooshed together and every time he tried to study the notes they appeared different, even on the line of notes that he had just read.  What did work for him was when a picture of the parts of the guitar was drawn showing where his fingers should go in relation to the frets and the strings.  So just like we have said lots of times in our blogs, on our website and in our books, these students need to see a real world image of what they are working with.  I found this interesting because it is another example of how the dyslexic brain can process  information and that it is so very different from the left brain. As interesting as that was the next observation was even more so for me.

This site is an example of good visual instructions for dyslexics wanting to learn to play the guitar: http://www.learntoplayguitarland.com/learn-guitar-chords

A couple of years ago, while editing an early book in the website, I saw a hand drawn picture of Goofy,  Scrooge McDuck  and one of the nephews.  It was drawn by Wil when he was about 11 years old.  At the time I didn’t really pay much attention to it. It was drawn well but what I must have missed about the drawing that makes it interesting is that he drew each drawing without lifting his pencil off the page. I remembered this drawing when we were talking about some of his recollections of his school years.  He said to me that when ever he drew things on paper he actually traced what was already on the page.  I didn’t understand what he meant so he explained it to me like this.  When he thought about what he wanted to draw, he first saw the complete image in his mind.  Then when he looked at the blank sheet of paper he saw that image on the paper.  All he needed to do then was use his pencil to trace over the lines of the drawing that he already saw on the blank paper.  Absolutely fascinating.

The point I’m trying to make here is we can only understand and appreciate what a dyslexic student is going through when we get a better idea about what they actually see or perceive when they are given information.  Yes, sometimes they have difficulties when they are expected to do tasks in a manner  we think makes the most sense.  Problem is, sometimes what makes sense to us doesn’t make sense to them but they can get there anyway by using their own processes.  We need to meet these people halfway, we need to hear what they say and listen to what makes sense to them.  Many times they find the solution to tasks when we just stop insisting that our preconceived notions are the only way to get a job done.

Just goes to show that we can all learn something new if we are willing to really listen to others.

Happy trails

Howie—

How to Teach Abstract Words to Dyslexics

Children "AROUND" the World -graphic from Unicef

More on the subject of Dr Jill Bolte-Taylor, she’s the brain research doctor who had a stroke that left her experiencing life for a while without the useful input from the left hemisphere of her brain. While listening to her talk about the journey she went on while experiencing life “from the right side” I gained a new perspective of how dyslexics process data. Of course when I say “process data” I am relating this to how dyslexic kids and individuals strive to do normal school tasks. Like how to spell or write or do math or understand fractions or tell time. Now ordinarily these are pretty easy to the majority of people and that’s because the majority of our population has easy access to the left half of the brain. The left brain easily manipulates concepts like the meaning of words, how to put sentences together using all the rules of punctuation, how to use one to one correspondence when counting numbers and what fractions and time represent. These are pretty abstract concepts because we really can’t see the sounds of words or see the idea of “half” or “quarter”. The left brain lives in the past and knows how to use all the data presented to it by the senses in a way that will make sense for the future so all these abstract concepts are handily dealt with.  So for most of us; problem solved.

I’m not really too concerned with how the majority of us deal with the abstract, what I am worried about is how to teach abstracts to dyslexic individuals. WE need to come up with methods that they can use that allows them to use abstracts even if they don’t understand them.( Luckily, many individuals begin to naturally understand abstracts as they get older which is normally around the age of thirteen and the brain maturing.  Another topic for another day)  For instance; how does anybody teach a dyslexic person the abstract word “around“. In order to spell the word they need to understand how to use it and what kind of context it can be used in. There is no use breaking the word into the bits and pieces phonetically and deal with the letters individually because each one of those letters can represent a separate picture to the dyslexic. It makes no sense trying to teach 6 separate images of the individual letters to teach the word, ” a-r-o-u-n-d“. They need to see the image of the whole word “around“. They also need to understand in what context to use the word to help them retain the word and remember how to spell it.   When I was watching Dr JBT talk about the right brain’s ability to process context I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, now I think I do.  So I am using an image here in the next paragraph to demonstrate how to see context at work.

One of the designers and co-author of the Turner-Hope method spoke to a teacher friend of hers who uses pictures to explain abstract words. This makes sense because the right brain deals really well with images. The teacher used Google Images to search for images of words. I tried it too by typing in the  word “around”  and searched Google Images. The examples that were produced were varied and many were appropriate. One image I found  especially good was a picture from a Unicef website of a group of children holding hands around the planet Earth. What a perfect way to show the idea of the very abstract term “around“.

It just goes to show that there are many different ways to teach complex concepts in classroom lessons and some methods are especially appropriate for dyslexic individuals.  We just have to keep looking in as many different directions as possible.

Happy trails!

Howie deGraaf – Editor for Dyslexia Victoria Online

Check our website for more info on dyslexia:

www.dyslexiavictoria.ca www.dyslexiavictoriaonline.com

How the Right Brain Works

Jill Bolte-Taylor

Right Brained, what does this mean? It really is both easy and difficult to describe. When we talk about a person being right brained, when referring to Dyslexia, we mean that person mostly uses the processing strengths of the right hemisphere of the brain. Generally we say the right brain is very good at dealing with “the big picture”, “problem solving” and it perceives the world in the “here and now”. We also say that the left hemisphere works with the details of the past and future. That is pretty simple but what does this mean and how do we describe it? Read on and it will become a little less mysterious.

I recently watched a series of webcasts and videos presented by and about Dr Jill Bolte-Taylor. She is a brain researcher and neuroanatomist. On December 10, 1996 she had a stroke that essentially shut off the left half of her brain. Over an eight year period she recovered and has gotten the use of her left brain again. What is absolutely fascinating about her experience is the series of observations she made while fully conscious and aware of her situation but with only the right half of her brain functioning properly.  She described how she experienced her universe without borders or limits. She saw items in terms of pixels and those pixels simply blended into the pixels of the items nearby so in effect there were no limits to her own body and consciousness. She felt she was part of the entire universe and, for her, limits didn’t exist.

Dr Bolte-Taylors’s experiences have been profoundly life changing for her and have changed how she lives her life and are too vast to describe in this blog but I was able to look at the this right brain, left brain issue  from a different perspective. Let me describe some of the experiences she had during the initial stroke itself to give you a sense of how the right brain and left brain work differently.

Her stroke left her confused and desperate to get help. She was able to stand and walk and breathe normally and she even realized that she could get help but because the right brain was almost completely dominant she had a series of almost insurmountable hurdles to overcome. She knew that she needed to contact somebody for help so she went to a set of business cards and a nearby phone. Her right brain knew that a business card had the phone number to call a colleague but her right brain also couldn’t read the numbers because that is part of the language of the left brain. She knew to match the shapes on the business card to the shapes on the phone. Because the right brain deals with the present and not the past or future she didn’t even know which numbers she had already pushed on the phone. She eventually got the number dialed and spoke to a colleague; at least her mind’s eye thought she was speaking. In reality, because the right brain does not process language, she was actually making nonsense sounds and hearing the same nonsense sounds from the phone. Eventually she got help and started her healing path. If you want to see this fascinating video follow this link.

www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/jill_bolte_taylor.html

After I saw this video I gained a new realization of what right brain versus left brain processing means. This also helped me to come to a different perception of how dyslexic individuals can struggle with tasks. In many instances these individuals have difficulty with the limits of the written word on a page because limits are part of what the left brain understands. When a person describes “the words falling off the page” when struggling to read a story it’s because this person needs some methods to learn how to recognize the limits of the page. The page has lines that are limits, punctuation also sets limits and the page edges are limits that some students don’t recognize.

What I understood while watching the video is by understanding what the dyslexic perceives we can begin to more easily create lessons and methods that are appropriate to that person. There is no use attempting to teach a dyslexic lesson formatted to how we perceive the information of the task, we need to be totally focused on what the student needs to see or hear or feel. That continues to be our mission at DYSLEXIA VICTORIA ONLINE and even that mission will probably change as we learn more about the subject of dyslexia.

Happy Trails!

Howie deGraaf

The Story of a Dyslexic Mother and Daughter

I would like to tell you a story.
Twenty-four years ago when my daughter, Genevieve was in grade two, I was called in for a meeting with her teacher. He told me that he suspected that she had a reading problem and he thought it might be “dyslexia”. I had heard the term when I was in university studying to become a teacher but I didn’t know anything about it.

KAREN AND GEN

He wanted me to talk to the teacher in charge of the program for slow readers. She did some tests on Gen and then told me she was setting up an appointment with a specialist for learning disabilities. More tests followed and then I was told that Gen was very bright and most likely dyslexic. She also said there was no assistance or tutoring help in the school system for her problem.

This was the beginning of a very long and frustrating journey.

The internet was not available back in the 1980’s and very little was known about dyslexia. It was also difficult finding anyone in my children’s education system that really believed it existed. Most teachers, principals and school psychologists who make up the majority of the individuals at an IEP(Individualized Education Program) meeting told me my expectations were too high for my child.

MY EXPECTATIONS WERE TOO HIGH?!!!

I said if she couldn’t read, write or do basic math she couldn’t even work at a gas station! My expectations were too high… can you imagine? I even had one school psychologist tell me about a girl with dyslexia she knew in middle school who was a cheerleader, an artist and very popular. She told me the girl seemed very happy and wasn’t concerned about her spelling and reading problems. I asked her how being a cheerleader, artist and being popular was going to help in the REAL world?

Realizing the schools would be no help I started to look for tutors or specialists in the phone book. I found a a woman who was running a school for dyslexics and had  her assess Gen.  She confirmed that she was dyslexic.  It was explained to me that she needed to have everything taught to her in whole and real images, not abstract. Also a dyslexic sees the complete picture of something first and then the parts. Think of the expression “forest before the trees”. People who are dyslexic would need to understand what a forest is in its entirety before they could identify, see or visualize the individual trees. Learning in whole concrete images or concepts is the key to their thinking and learning style and how a right-brained individual processes information.

So I started to explain everything to her with real life concepts and when I taught her a new piece of information I gave her the whole idea first. I’ll give you an example. One day Gen was working on a arithmetic sheet in grade three. The exercise listed specific amounts of money like $1.00, 75 cents, $1.50, etc. The directions asked what six coins (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, etc.) would you need to add up to those amounts. This was too abstract for her. She couldn’t begin to imagine what those coins would be. I got her a jar of change, poured the coins out in front of her. She knew what coins were because they were real, she knew what to use them for and how much they were worth because she had bought items from stores with me. I then said count up different coins until they added up to the amounts on her sheet. So a $1.00 could be 3 quarters, 2 dimes and one nickel. She understood immediately and went through the exercise sheet in minutes!

Suddenly after years of confusion she could be taught! This was the start of FINALLY understanding my daughter and how she thinks and how she learns.

From there I found some help from tutors who worked with dyslexics,  I read any books on the subject I could find and anyone  who had some ideas. I started to come up with ways to help her with her class work and how to work with the left-brained teaching methods she was being taught at school.  She was able to follow the teacher by knowing what questions she needed to ask to understand and comprehend what was being taught and what was expected of her.

I also developed methods to teach her spelling, reading, arithmetic, telling time, etc. that helped her stay caught up with the class.

We had terrific success!

Genevieve successfully graduated high school with good grades and the ability to go on to college successfully.

We also had the rest of my kids, my husband and myself tested for dyslexia. We all have varying degrees of dyslexia. Turns out my father, my sister, one of my brothers and many of my husband’s family are also dyslexic.  We are all coping with it and many of us are using our “right-brain dyslexic gift” very effectively! I have discovered that being right-brained and dyslexic can be an incredible asset.

My three dyslexic children are now adults starting their own families. They are all doing very well in their fields of work and have overcome the stigma of dyslexia. They all can spell, read and write.

Today Genevieve manages our family fence construction business with 23 employees. She handles all aspects of the business which includes those skills she wasn’t able to do back in elementary school when we first became aware she was dyslexic. She is also married, has a husband and two children and somehow finds time to help family and friends with their problems!  Because she is right-brained , Gen has incredible problem-solving skills which is a trait of this learning and thinking style.

Any questions, I encourage you to please email me at: khope@dyslexiavictoria.ca or check out our website at: www.dyslexiavictoria.ca or www.dyslexiavictoriaonline.com

Thanks for listening.

Karen Hope